Leather creaks beneath the sweat of his palms, fingers knuckle-white as they grip too-tightly at the motel room Bible as though it were to be his saving grace.

He hears the Hellhounds barking in the distance, the sounds of their malicious snarling heard over the pounding of his own erratic heartbeat, over even Lilith’s continued taunting that the end is nigh and he’s going back to hell so soon, all too soon, and he’s not ready for that, he’ll never be ready for that, never ever, no, no, he doesn’t want to go, oh god please, and he prays- he prays like he actually believes, prays like it’ll be last thing he ever does, because it is, and oh god, oh god, if that doesn’t scare the shit out of him.

“Please,” he breathes out with a last gasping of breath and Lilith laughs, she laughs just before she screams, a resounding echo of fury sounding suddenly from her tiny child-like body an instant before she disappears, like a wisp of smoke into nothingness, and she is gone, replaced immediately by a sight that strikes an all too familiar terror straight into the heart of him.

Castiel.

Castiel, the angel, who stands where Lilith once stood in her pretty white party dress, staring at him with a dangerous glint to his eye and Dean pushes up on trembling arms, fumbles backwards as Castiel steps towards him, palm outstretched and reaching and Dean feels the lurching of a newer, deeper, more primeval fear surging through him. He scrabbles back, away, legs kicking out and his Bible arm flailing before him as though to ward off Castiel who merely steps closer still.

“No,” he breathes, choking out the word in a repetitive mantra, “No, no, please no,” he begs, unashamedly he begs now, quivering under the touch as Castiel reaches him, reaches out to him, and lays his palm atop Dean’s hand and holds his arm tightly still.

“No, I don’t want to go back,” he shakes his head against the thought, the words, against the knowledge that this is it, that Lilith has been replaced with the image of Castiel only so that he can appreciate the irony of it that much better once he opens his eyes and finds himself knee deep in the bowels of hell.

Castiel, who pulled him from hell and threatened to throw him back in. Castiel, who is speaking words he cannot hear- words he will not hear- through the rush of blood against his ears and the blurring of his vision in denial of this hallucination.

“Don’t make me go back!” Castiel’s hands are on him now, holding, grasping, gripping tight against his animalistic thrashing; panic rising, heart thumping- boom-boom, boom-boom, he feels it, the light-headedness, the nauseous lurching of his stomach before the faint, before the end. He feels it. He knows it. And he is terrified to death of it.

“Don’t- no- no-,”

“Dean!” The sound of his name is a shout through the darkness of his mind, a searing hot flash of pain shooting up his arm as bare flesh meets flesh and Castiel presses his fingers into the palm-print on his arm, holding and gripping and pulling him back from the brink, drawing him up and into his waiting arms.

Dean is jerked back into the moment, back into the now, his body shuddering as he clings almost desperately to the creature before him.

“Dean,” Castiel calls to him again, his voice as calm and level as it always is.

“Don’t make me go back,” Dean whispers in answer, exhausted, voice hoarse from his screaming and Castiel squeezes his hands in reassurance seconds before Dean’s eyes roll and his body gives into ungraceful unconsciousness.

“No,” Castiel whispers into the now-quiet of the room, holding Dean closer still as he turns his gaze slowly heavenward. “I won’t make you go back.”